Health District To Trim Tax Rate

Budget Plan Dips Into About $10 Million Surplus

The Palm Beach County Health Care District on Tuesday cut its tax rate for the coming fiscal year, and one board member predicted the final levy will be slightly lower.

``I think we can do some trimming and bring the tax down a little more,'' Scott Porter, a certified public accountant, told district staff members.

The staff has proposed a $104 million budget, which includes $3.8 million to provide a nurse in every public school in the county and $3.5 million to build a health district headquarters building.

The health district provides medical care for the working poor, runs the county's trauma network and the Palm Beach County Home, and next year will operate a health maintenance organization for Medicaid patients.

If the board approves the proposed rate after public hearings, homeowners will pay $1.17 per $1,000 of assessed taxable property value in health district taxes, the lowest rate since the agency's creation in 1989.

The levy peaked and remained at $1.471/2 from 1992 to 1994, during which time the district suffered a $40 million deficit.

Under the proposed rate, the owner of a home assessed at $125,000 who takes the $25,000 homestead exemption would pay $117 in health district taxes, down from this year's $120, unless it is lowered more.

Porter proposed reducing the rate to $1.16 of assessed taxable property value, saving the owner of that $125,000 home another dollar.

Board members concurred on most items in the budget, which will use almost $10 million of the district's $57 million surplus amassed in the past three years because enrollment levels never reached projections.

Porter, however, objected to the proposed hiring of an in-house lawyer for $69,839.

He said this could not be justified because legal fees paid to outside attorneys were projected to drop only $55,000 - to $360,000 from $415,000.

He also predicted that an in-house lawyer would require a legal assistant, computer software and a legal library, propelling legal costs far higher than they are now.

The fiscal package released on Tuesday also included budget projections for the next 10 years, which predict a steady tax rate through 2001 that would climb to $1.34 per $1,000 of assessed taxable property value in 2006.

By that year, the district still would have a $27 million surplus.

Included in the projection for 1998 is the purchase of two helicopters to replace the present Trauma Hawk at an estimated cost of $10 million.

One of the helicopters would continue to be based at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, while the other would be stationed in the western communities, possibly Pahokee, trauma agency chief Esther Hamlet said.